Electronic Media

Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical energy for the end-user (audience) to access the content. This is in contrast to static media (mainly print media), which today are most often created electronically, but don't require electronics to be accessed by the end-user in the printed form. The primary electronic media sources familiar to the general public are better known asvideo recordings, audio recordings, multimedia presentations, slide presentations, CD-ROM and online content. Most new media are in the form of digital media. However, electronic media may be in either analog or digital format.
Although the term is usually associated with content recorded on a storage medium, recordings are not required for live broadcastingand online networking.
Any equipment used in the electronic communication process (e.g. television, radio, telephone, desktop computer, game console,handheld device) may also be considered electronic media.
Uses : Electronic media are ubiquitous in most of the developed world. As of 2005, there are reports of satellite receivers being present in some of the most remote and inaccessible regions of China. Electronic media devices have found their way into all parts of modern life. The term is relevant to media ecology for studying its impact compared to printed media and broadening the scope of understanding media beyond a simplistic aspect of media such as one delivery platform (e.g. the World Wide Web) aside from many other options. The term is also relevant to professional career development regarding related skill sets.
Primary uses of electronic media: * Journalism * News * Commerce * Marketing * Advertising * Barker channel * Digital signage * Graphic Design * Education * Professional Training * Science * Engineering | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_media | | | Electronic Media is a rich resource of services, supplies, creative and innovative solutions to everyday domestic and professional demands. Our commitement to our clients makes us the preferred supplier of this kind in South Africa. As there are so many applications to what we can do for you, should you not find the specifics listed on our website, please contact us and we will gladly assist as soon as possible.What is electronic media?Definition: Electronic Media is information or data that is created, distributed and accessed using a form of electronics, electromechanical energy or any equipment used in electronic communications. The common equipment we use on a day to day basis to access Electronic Media is our television, radio, computer, cell phones and other devices transporting information to and from us by means of electronic involvement. | | | Design, Supply, Produce... | | | Building New Radio Stations

We provide a turnkey service for new radio stations and those wanting to upgrade. This includes the initial consultation with the client regarding their broadcasting license and project funding applications. Thereafter we will provide the first quotation, the planning, studio equipment and transmission. | | | | | | | | http://www.electronicmedia.co.za/ The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and Research
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Abstract
Since the early 1960s research evidence has been accumulating that suggests that exposure to violence in television, movies, video games, cell phones, and on the internet increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of them behaving violently. In the current review this research evidence is critically assessed, and the psychological theory that explains why exposure to violence has detrimental effects for both the short run and long run is elaborated. Finally, the size of the “media violence effect” is compared with some other well known threats to society to estimate how important a threat it should be considered.
One of the notable changes in our social environment in the 20th and 21st centuries has been the saturation of our culture and daily lives by the mass media. In this new environment radio, television, movies, videos, video games, cell phones, and computer networks have assumed central roles in our children’s daily lives. For better or worse the mass media are having an enormous impact on our children’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. Unfortunately, the consequences of one particular common element of the electronic mass media has a particularly detrimental effect on children’s well being. Research evidence has accumulated over the past half-century that exposure to violence on television, movies, and most recently in video games increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of violent behavior. Correspondingly, the recent increase in the use of mobile phones, text messaging, e-mail, and chat rooms by our youth have opened new venues for social interaction in which aggression can occur and youth can be victimized – new venues that break the old boundaries of family, neighborhood, and community that might have protected our youth to some extent in the past. These globe spanning electronic communication media have not really introduced new psychological threats to our children, but they have made it much harder to protect youth from the threats and have exposed many more of them to threats that only a few might have experienced before. It is now not just kids in bad neighborhoods or with bad friends who are likely to be exposed to bad things when they go out on the street. A ‘virtual’ bad street is easily available to most youth now. However, our response should not be to panic and keep our children “indoors” because the “streets” out there are dangerous. The streets also provide wonderful experiences and help youth become the kinds of adults we desire. Rather our response should be to understand the dangers on the streets, to help our children understand and avoid the dangers, to avoid exaggerating the dangers which will destroy our credibility, and also to try to control exposure to the extent we can.
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Background for the Review
Different people may have quite different things in mind when they think of media violence. Similarly, among the public there may be little consensus on what constitutes aggressive and violent behavior. Most researchers, however, have clear conceptions of what they mean by media violence and aggressive behavior.
Most researchers define media violence as visual portrayals of acts of physical aggression by one human or human-like character against another. This definition has evolved as theories about the effects of media violence have evolved and represents an attempt to describe the kind of violent media presentation that is most likely to teach the viewer to be more violent. Movies depicting violence of this type were frequent 75 years ago and are even more frequent today, e.g., M, The Maltese Falcon, Shane, Dirty Harry, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, Kill Bill. Violent TV programs became common shortly after TV became common in American homes about 55 years ago and are common today, e.g.,Gunsmoke, Miami Vice, CSI, and 24. More recently, video games, internet displays, and cell phone displays have become part of most children’s growing-up, and violent displays have become common on them, e.g., Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, Warrior.
To most researchers, aggressive behavior refers to an act that is intended to injure or irritate another person. Laymen may call assertive salesmen “aggressive,” but researchers do not because there is no intent to harm. Aggression can be physical or non-physical. It includes many kinds of behavior that do not seem to fit the commonly understood meaning of “violence.” Insults and spreading harmful rumors fit the definition. Of course, the aggressive behaviors of greatest concern clearly involve physical aggression ranging in severity from pushing or shoving, to fighting, to serious assaults and homicide. In this review he term violent behavior is used to describe these more serious forms of physical aggression that have a significant risk of seriously injuring the victim.
Violent or aggressive actions seldom result from a single cause; rather, multiple factors converging over time contribute to such behavior. Accordingly, the influence of the violent mass media is best viewed as one of the many potential factors that influence the risk for violence and aggression. No reputable researcher is suggesting that media violence is “the” cause of violent behavior. Furthermore, a developmental perspective is essential for an adequate understanding of how media violence affects youthful conduct and in order to formulate a coherent response to this problem. Most youth who are aggressive and engage in some forms of antisocial behavior do not go on to become violent teens and adults [1]. Still, research has shown that a significant proportion of aggressive children are likely to grow up to be aggressive adults, and that seriously violent adolescents and adults often were highly aggressive and even violent as children [2]. The best single predictor of violent behavior in older adolescents, young adults, and even middle aged adults is aggressive behavior when they were younger. Thus, anything that promotes aggressive behavior in young children statistically is a risk factor for violent behavior in adults as well.
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Theoretical Explanations for Media Violence Effects
In order to understand the empirical research implicating violence in electronic media as a threat to society, an understanding of why and how violent media cause aggression is vital. In fact, psychological theories that explain why media violence is such a threat are now well established. Furthermore, these theories also explain why the observation of violence in the real world – among the family, among peers, and within the community – also stimulates aggressive behavior in the observer.
Somewhat different processes seem to cause short term effects of violent content and long term effects of violent content, and that both of these processes are distinct from the time displacement effects that engagement in media may have on children. Time displacement effects refer to the role of the mass media (including video games) in displacing other activities in which the child might engage which might change the risk for certain kinds of behavior, e.g. replacing reading, athletics, etc. This essay is focusing on the effects of violent media content, and displacement effects will not be reviewed though they may well have important consequences.
Short-term Effects
Most theorists would now agree that the short term effects of exposure to media violence are mostly due to 1) priming processes, 2) arousal processes, and 3) the immediate mimicking of specific behaviors [3,4].
Priming
Priming is the process through which spreading activation in the brain’s neural network from the locus representing an external observed stimulus excites another brain node representing a cognition, emotion, or behavior. The external stimulus can be inherently linked to a cognition, e.g., the sight of a gun is inherently linked to the concept of aggression [5], or the external stimulus can be something inherently neutral like a particular ethnic group (e.g., African-American) that has become linked in the past to certain beliefs or behaviors (e.g., welfare). The primed concepts make behaviors linked to them more likely. When media violence primes aggressive concepts, aggression is more likely.
Arousal
To the extent that mass media presentations arouse the observer, aggressive behavior may also become more likely in the short run for two possible reasons -- excitation transfer [6] and general arousal [7]. First, a subsequent stimulus that arouses an emotion (e.g. a provocation arousing anger) may be perceived as more severe than it is because some of the emotional response stimulated by the media presentation is miss-attributed as due to the provocation transfer. For example, immediately following an exciting media presentation, such excitation transfer could cause more aggressive responses to provocation. Alternatively, the increased general arousal stimulated by the media presentation may simply reach such a peak that inhibition of inappropriate responses is diminished, and dominant learned responses are displayed in social problem solving, e.g. direct instrumental aggression.
Mimicry
The third short term process, imitation of specific behaviors, can be viewed as a special case of the more general long-term process of observational learning [8]. In recent years evidence has accumulated that human and primate young have an innate tendency to mimic whomever they observe [9]. Observation of specific social behaviors around them increases the likelihood of children behaving exactly that way. Specifically, as children observe violent behavior, they are prone to mimic it. The neurological process through which this happens is not completely understood, but it seems likely that “mirror neurons,” which fire when either a behavior is observed or when the same behavior is acted out, play an important role [10, 4].
Long-term Effects
Long term content effects, on the other hand, seem to be due to 1) more lasting observational learningof cognitions and behaviors (i.e., imitation of behaviors), and 2) activation and desensitization of emotional processes.
Observational learning
According to widely accepted social cognitive models, a person’s social behavior is controlled to a great extent by the interplay of the current situation with the person’s emotional state, their schemas about the world, their normative beliefs about what is appropriate, and the scripts for social behavior that they have learned [11]. During early, middle, and late childhood children encode in memory social scripts to guide behavior though observation of family, peers, community, and mass media. Consequently observed behaviors are imitated long after they are observed [10]. During this period, children’s social cognitive schemas about the world around them also are elaborated. For example, extensive observation of violence has been shown to bias children’s world schemas toward attributing hostility to others’ actions. Such attributions in turn increase the likelihood of children behaving aggressively [12]. As children mature further, normative beliefs about what social behaviors are appropriate become crystallized and begin to act as filters to limit inappropriate social behaviors [13]. These normative beliefs are influenced in part by children’s observation of the behaviors of those around them including those observed in the mass media.
Desensitization
Long-term socialization effects of the mass media are also quite likely increased by the way the mass media and video games affect emotions. Repeated exposures to emotionally activating media or video games can lead to habituation of certain natural emotional reactions. This process is called “desensitization.” Negative emotions experienced automatically by viewers in response to a particular violent or gory scene decline in intensity after many exposures [4]. For example, increased heart rates, perspiration, and self-reports of discomfort often accompany exposure to blood and gore. However, with repeated exposures, this negative emotional response habituates, and the child becomes “desensitized.” The child can then think about and plan proactive aggressive acts without experiencing negative affect [4].
Enactive learning
One more theoretical point is important. Observational learning and desensitization do not occur independently of other learning processes. Children are constantly being conditioned and reinforced to behave in certain ways, and this learning may occur during media interactions. For example, because players of violent video games are not just observers but also “active” participants in violent actions, and are generally reinforced for using violence to gain desired goals, the effects on stimulating long-term increases in violent behavior should be even greater for video games than for TV, movies, or internet displays of violence. At the same time, because some video games are played together by social groups (e.g., multi-person games) and because individual games may often be played together by peers, more complex social conditioning processes may be involved that have not yet been empirically examined. These effects, including effects of selection and involvement, need to be explored.
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The Key Empirical Studies
Given this theoretical back ground, let us now examine the empirical research that indicates that childhood exposure to media violence has both short term and long term effects in stimulating aggression and violence in the viewer. Most of this research is on TV, movies, and video games, but from the theory above one can see that the same effects should occur for violence portrayed on various internet sites (e.g., multi-person game sites, video posting sites, chat rooms) and on handheld cell phones or computers.
Violence in Television, Films, and Video Games
The fact that most research on the impact of media violence on aggressive behavior has focused on violence in fictional television and film and video games is not surprising given the prominence of violent content in these media and the prominence of these media in children’s lives.
Children in the United States spend an average of between three and four hours per day viewing television [14], and the best studies have shown that over 60% of programs contain some violence, and about 40% of those contain heavy violence [15]. Children are also spending an increasingly large amount of time playing video games, most of which contain violence. Video game units are now present in 83% of homes with children [16]. In 2004, children spent 49 minutes per day playing video, and on any given day, 52% of children ages 8–18 years play a video game games [16]. Video game use peaks during middle childhood with an average of 65 minutes per day for 8–10 year-olds, and declines to 33 minutes per day for 15–18 year-olds [16]. And most of these games are violent; 94% of games rated (by the video game industry) as appropriate for teens are described as containing violence, and ratings by independent researchers suggest that the real percentage may be even higher [17]. No published study has quantified the violence in games rated ‘M’ for mature—presumably, these are even more likely to be violent.
Meta-analyses that average the effects observed in many studies provide the best overall estimates of the effects of media violence. Two particularly notable meta-analyses are those of Paik and Comstock [18] and Anderson and Bushman [19]. The Paik and Comstock meta-analysis focused on violent TV and films while the Anderson and Bushman meta-analysis focused on violent video games.
Paik and Comstock [18] examined effect sizes from 217 studies published between 1957 and 1990. For the randomized experiments they reviewed, Paik and Comstock found an average effect size (r =.38, N=432 independent tests of hypotheses) which is moderate to large compared to other public health effects. When the analysis was limited to experiments on physical violence against a person, the averager was still .32 (N=71 independent tests). This meta-analysis also examined cross-sectional and longitudinal field surveys published between 1957 and 1990. For these studies the authors found an average r of .19 (N=410 independent tests). When only studies were used for which the dependent measure was actual physical aggression against another person (N=200), the effect size remained unchanged. Finally, the average correlation of media violence exposure with engaging in criminal violence was .13.
Anderson and Bushman [19] conducted the key meta-analyses on the effects of violent video games. Their meta-analyses revealed effect sizes for violent video games ranging from .15 to .30. Specifically, playing violent video games was related to increases in aggressive behavior (r = .27), aggressive affect (r=.19), aggressive cognitions (i.e., aggressive thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes), (r =.27), and physiological arousal (r = .22) and was related to decreases in prosocial (helping) behavior (r = −.27). Furthermore, when studies were coded for the quality of their methodology, the best studies yielded larger effect sizes than the “not-best” studies.
One criticism sometimes leveled at meta-analyses is based on the “file drawer effect.” This refers to the fact that studies with “non-significant” results are less likely to be published and to appear in meta-analyses. However, one can correct for this problem by estimating how many “null-effect” studies it would take to change the results of the meta-analysis. This has been done with the above meta-analyses, and the numbers are very large. For example, Paik and Comstock [18] show that over 500,000 cases of null effects would have to exist in file drawers to change their overall conclusion of a significant positive relation between exposure to media violence and aggression.
While meta-analyses are good of obtaining a summary view of what the research shows, a better understanding of the research can be obtained by examining a few key specific studies in more detail.
Experiments
Generally, experiments have demonstrated that exposing people, especially children and youth, to violent behavior on film and TV increases the likelihood that they will behave aggressively immediately afterwards. In the typical paradigm, randomly selected individuals are shown either a violent or non-violent short film or TV program or play a violent or non-violent video game and are then observed as they have the opportunity to aggress. For children, this generally means playing with other children in situations that might stimulate conflict; for adults, it generally means participating in a competitive activity in which winning seems to involve inflicting pain on another person.
Children in such experiments who see the violent film clip or play the violent game typically behave more aggressively immediately afterwards than those viewing or playing nonviolence (20, 21, 22). For example, Josephson (22) randomly assigned 396 seven- to nine-year-old boys to watch either a violent or a nonviolent film before they played a game of floor hockey in school. Observers who did not know what movie any boy had seen recorded the number of times each boy physically attacked another boy during the game. Physical attack was defined to include hitting, elbowing, or shoving another player to the floor, as well as tripping, kneeing, and other assaultive behaviors that would be penalized in hockey. For some children, the referees carried a walkie-talkie, a specific cue that had appeared in the violent film that was expected to remind the boys of the movie they had seen earlier. For boys rated by their teacher as frequently aggressive, the combination of seeing a violent film and seeing the movie-associated cue stimulated significantly more assaultive behavior than any other combination of film and cue. Parallel results have been found in randomized experiments for preschoolers who physically attack each other more often after watching violent videos [21] and for older delinquent adolescents who get into more fights on days they see more violent films [23].
In a randomized experiment with violent video games, Irwin & Gross [24] assessed physical aggression (e.g., hitting, shoving, pinching, kicking) between boys who had just played either a violent or a nonviolent video game. Those who had played the violent video game were more physically aggressive toward peers. Other randomized experiments have measured college students’ propensity to be physically aggressive after they had played (or not played) a violent video game. For example, Bartholow &Anderson [25] found that male and female college students who had played a violent game subsequently delivered more than two and a half times as many high-intensity punishments to a peer as those who played a nonviolent video game. Other experiments have shown that it is the violence in video games, not the excitement that playing them provokes, that produces the increase in aggression [26].
In summary, experiments unambiguously show that viewing violent videos, films, cartoons, or TV dramas or playing violent video games “cause” the risk to go up that the observing child will behave seriously aggressively toward others immediately afterwards. This is true of preschoolers, elementary school children, high school children, college students, and adults. Those who watch the violent clips tend to behave more aggressively than those who view non-violent clips, and they adopt beliefs that are more “accepting” of violence [27].
One more quasi-experiment frequently cited by game manufacturers should be mentioned here. Williams and Skoric [28] have published the results of a dissertation study of cooperative online game playing by adults in which they report no significant long-term effects of playing a violent game on the adult’s behavior. However, the low statistical power of the study, the numerous methodological flaws (self-selection of a biased sample, lack of an adequate control group, the lack of adequate behavioral measures) make the validity of the study highly questionable. Furthermore, the participants were adults for whom there would be little theoretical reason to expect long-term effects.
Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies
Empirical cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of youth behaving and watching or playing violent media in their natural environments do not test causation as well as experiments do, but they provide strong evidence that the causal processes demonstrated in experiments generalize to violence observed in the real world and have significant effects on real world violent behavior. As reported in the discussion of meta-analyses above, the great majority of competently done one-shot survey studies have shown that children who watch more media violence day in and day out behave more aggressively day in and day out [18]. The relationship is less strong than that observed in laboratory experiments, but it is nonetheless large enough to be socially significant; the correlations obtained are usually are between .15 and .30. Moreover, the relation is highly replicable even across researchers who disagree about the reasons for the relationship [e.g., 29] and across countries [30, 31].
Complementing these one-time survey studies are the longitudinal real-world studies that have shown correlations over time from childhood viewing of media violence to later adolescent and adult aggressive behavior [31, 32, 33, 34, 35]; for reviews see [4, 27, 33]. This studies have shown that early habitual exposure to media violence in middle-childhood predicts increased aggressiveness 1 year, 3 years, 10 years, 15 years, and 22 years later in adulthood, even controlling for early aggressiveness. On the other hand, behaving aggressively in childhood is a much weaker predictor of higher subsequent viewing of violence when initial violence viewing is controlled, making it implausible that the correlation between aggression and violent media use was primarily due to aggressive children turning to watching more violence [31, 32, 33]. As discussed below the pattern of results suggests that the strongest contribution to the correlation is the stimulation of aggression from exposure to media violence but that those behaving aggressively may also have a tendency to turn to watching more violence, leading to a downward spiral effect [13].
An example is illustrative. In a study of children interviewed each year for three years as they moved through middle childhood, Huesmann et al. [31] found increasing rates of aggression for both boys and girls who watched more television violence even with controls for initial aggressiveness and many other background factors. Children who identified with the portrayed aggressor and those who perceived the violence as realistic were especially likely to show these observational learning effects. A 15-year follow-up of these children [33] demonstrated that those who habitually watched more TV violence in their middle-childhood years grew up to be more aggressive young adults. For example, among children who were in the upper quartile on violence viewing in middle childhood, 11% of the males had been convicted of a crime (compared with 3% for other males), 42% had “pushed, grabbed, or shoved their spouse” in the past year (compared with 22% of other males), and 69% had “shoved a person” when made angry in the past year (compared with 50% of other males). For females, 39% of the high-violence-viewers had “thrown something at their spouse” in the past year (compared with 17% of the other females), and 17% had “punched, beaten, or choked” another adult when angry in the past year (compared with 4% of the other females). These effects were not attributable to any of a large set of child and parent characteristics including demographic factors, intelligence, parenting practices. Overall, for both males and females the effect of middle-childhood violence viewing on young adult aggression was significant even when controlling for their initial aggression. In contrast, the effect of middle-childhood aggression on adult violence viewing when controlling for initial violence viewing was not-significant, though it was positive.
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Moderators of Media Violence Effects
Obviously, not all observers of violence are affected equally by what they observe at all times. Research has shown that the effects of media violence on children are moderated by situational characteristics of the presentation including how well it attracts and sustains attention, personal characteristics of the viewer including their aggressive predispositions, and characteristics of the physical and human context in which the children are exposed to violence.
In terms of plot characteristics, portraying violence as justified and showing rewards (or at least not showing punishments) for violence increase the effects that media violence has in stimulating aggression, particularly in the long run [27, 36, 37]. As for viewer characteristics that depend on perceptions of the plot, those viewers who perceive the violence as telling about life more like it really is and who identify more with the perpetrator of the violence are also stimulated more toward violent behavior in the long run [27, 30, 33, 38]. Taken together these facts mean that violent acts by charismatic heroes, that appear justified and are rewarded, are the violent acts most likely to increase viewer’s aggression.
A number of researchers have suggested that, independently of the plot, viewers or game players who are already aggressive should be the only one’s affected. This is certainly not true. While the already aggressive child who watches or plays a lot of violent media may become the most aggressive young adult, the research shows that even initially unaggressive children are made more aggressive by viewing media violence [27, 32, 33]. Long term effects due appear to be stronger for younger children [3, 14], but short term affects appear, if anything, stronger for older children [3] perhaps because one needs to have already learned aggressive scripts to have them primed by violent displays. While the effects appeared weaker for female 40 years ago [32], they appear equally strong today [33]. Finally, having a high IQ does not seem to protect a child against being influenced [27].
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Mediators of Media Violence Effects
Most researchers believe that the long term effects of media violence depend on social cognitions that control social behavior being changed for the long run. More research needs to completed to identify all the mediators, but it seems clear that they include normative beliefs about what kinds of social behaviors are OK [4, 13, 27], world schemas that lead to hostile or non-hostile attributions about others intentions [4, 12, 27], and social scripts that automatically control social behavior once they are well learned [4, 11,27].
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Summary
This review marshals evidence that compelling points to the conclusion that media violence increases the risk significantly that a viewer or game player will behave more violently in the short run and in the long run. Randomized experiments demonstrate conclusively that exposure to media violence immediately increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior for children and adults in the short run. The most important underlying process for this effect is probably priming though mimicry and increased arousal also play important roles. The evidence from longitudinal field studies is also compelling that children’s exposure to violent electronic media including violent games leads to long-term increases in their risk for behaving aggressively and violently. These long-term effects are a consequence of the powerful observational learning and desensitization processes that neuroscientists and psychologists now understand occur automatically in the human child. Children automatically acquire scripts for the behaviors they observe around them in real life or in the media along with emotional reactions and social cognitions that support those behaviors. Social comparison processes also lead children to seek out others who behave similarly aggressively in the media or in real life leading to a downward spiral process that increases risk for violent behavior.
One valid remaining question is whether the size of this effect is large enough that one should consider it to be a public health threat. The answer seems to be “yes.” Two calculations support this conclusion. First, according to the best meta-analyses [18, 19] the long term size of the effect of exposure to media violence in childhood on later aggressive or violent behavior is about equivalent to a correlation of .20 to .30. While some might argue that this explains only 4% to 9% of the individual variation in aggressive behavior, as several scholars have pointed out [39, 40], percent variance explained is not a good statistic to use when predicting low probability events with high social costs. For example, a correlation of 0.3 with aggression translates into a change in the odds of aggression from 50/50 to 65/35 -- not a trivial change when one is dealing with life threatening behavior[40].
Secondly, the effect size of media violence is the same or larger than the effect size of many other recognized threats to public health. In Figure 1 from Bushman and Huesmann [41], the effect sizes for many common threats to public health are compared with the effect that media violence has on aggression. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704015/

The Effects of Electronic Media On A Developing Brain |

Abstract: The attentional demands of electronic media range from rapt (video games) to passive (much TV), but this is the first generation to directly interact with and alter the content on the screen and the conversation on the radio. Screenagers emotionally understand electronic media in ways that adults don't -- as a viral replicating cultural reality, instead of as a mere communicator of events. For example, portable cameras have helped to shift TV's content from dramatic depiction's to live theater, extended (and often endlessly repeated and discussed) live coverage of such breaking events as wars, accidents, trials, sports, and talk-show arguments. What occurs anywhere is immediately available everywhere. Our world has truly become a gossipy global village, where everyone knows everyone else's business.
Apportioning Time And Energy During Maturation

We have about 150,000 hours of living to expend between the ages of one and 18.

We sleep about 50,000 hours of this time, and we dream about two hours of the eight we sleep each night. Sleeping and dreaming appear to be positively related to the development and maintenance of the long term memories that emerge out of daytime activities, because they allow our brain to eliminate the interference of external sensory/motor activity while it physically adds to, edits, and erases the neural network synaptic connections that create long-term memories.

We spend about 65,000 of our 100,000 waking hours involved in solitary activities, and in direct informal relationships with family and friends, and these activities play a major role in the development and maintenance of important personal memories.

We spend about 35,000 of our waking hours with our larger culture in formal and informal metaphoric/symbolic activities -- about 12,000 hours in school, and about twice that much with various forms of mass media (e.g., TV, computers, films, music, sports, non-school print media, churches, museums). Mass media and school thus play major roles in the development and maintenance of important culture memories .

So on an average developmental day between the ages of l-18, a young person sleeps 8 hours, spends 10 waking hours with self, family, and friends, 4 with mass media -- and only 2 hours in school. Our society has incredible expectations for those two hours!

Young people tend now to spend much time/energy on such electronic media as video games, TV, and computers -- at the expense of non-electronic media and socialization (although new forms of socialization are evolving around TV-watching and video-game-playing).

The attentional demands of electronic media range from rapt (video games) to passive (much TV), but this is the first generation to directly interact with and alter the content on the screen and the conversation on the radio. Screenagers emotionally understand electronic media in ways that adults don't -- as a viral replicating cultural reality, instead of as a mere communicator of events. For example, portable cameras have helped to shift TV's content from dramatic depiction's to live theater, extended (and often endlessly repeated and discussed) live coverage of such breaking events as wars, accidents, trials, sports, and talk-show arguments. What occurs anywhere is immediately available everywhere. Our world has truly become a gossipy global village, where everyone knows everyone else's business.

Emotion drives attention, which drives learning, memory, and behavior, so mass media often insert strong primal emotional elements into their programming to increase attention. Since violence and sexuality in media trigger primal emotions, most young people confront thousands of violent acts and heavy doses of sexuality during their childhood media interactions. This comes at the expense, alas, of other more positive and normative experiences with human behaviors and interactions. Mass media tend to show us how to be sexy not sexual, and powerful not peaceful.

Commercial sponsorship in mass media has led to a distorted presentation of important cultural and consumer-related issues. For example, TV commercials tend to be very short, superficial, and factually biased. Further, computer programs and TV editing techniques tend to compress, extend, and distort normal time/space relationships, a critically important element in the creation and use of effective long- term memories.

Our Brain and Electronic Media: Biological Systems, Cultural Issues

Brain Development

- Our awesomely complex, yet elegantly simple brain is the best organized three pounds of matter in the known universe. Decidedly human but individually unique, it is a wary, curious, and exploratory organ that actively experiences and interprets its environment, applying a variety of cognitive models and systems that it develops (within established limits) to the reality it perceives. The brain, as a basic animal organ, developed in three successive layers over evolutionary time to meet survival, emotional, and finally rational challenges. Our rational cortical forebrain is unique among animal brains in its size and capabilities, but our sub cortical survival and emotional systems play much more powerful roles in shaping our thoughts and behavior than previously believed.

- Our brain is composed of tens of billions of highly interconnected neurons that interact electrochemically with surrounding and distant neurons through a complex system of tubular (dendrite/axon) extensions that receive and send messages. Cortical neurons are organized into a vast number of dedicated semiautonomous columnar modules (or networks)/ most of which are modifiable by the experiences that wire up our brain to its environment. Each module processes a very specific function (a tone, vertical lines), and groups of modules consolidate their functions to process more complex cognitive functions. And so, for example, sounds become phonemes become words become sentences become stories.

- Genetics plays a much larger role in brain development and capability than previously believed. because biological evolution proceeds much slower than cultural evolution, we're horn with a generic human brain that's genetically more tuned to the pastoral ecological environment that humans lived in thousands of years ago than to our current fast-paced urban electronic environment. Our curiosity and inherently strong problem-solving capabilities allowed us to develop such tools as autos/ books/ computers/ drugs that compensate for our body/brain limitations -- and very powerful portable electronic computerized instruments are now rapidly transforming our culture. We can thus view drugs and technology as a fourth technological brain -- located outside of our skull, but powerfully interactive with the three integrated biological brains within our skull.

- Motivation experience and training can enhance generic capabilities (e.g., infants can easily master any human language, but they aren't born proficient in any of them), so brain development is a dynamic mix of nature and nurture. Thus, it's important to choose one's parents carefully -- because of the genes they pass on, and because of the cultural environment they create -- the appropriate mix of biology, technology, and society.

- Our brain is designed to adapt its cortical networks to the environment in which it lives (e.g., to master the local language). A socially interactive environment that stimulates curiosity and exploration enhances the development of an effective brain. Thus, excessive childhood involvement with electronic media that limit social interaction could hinder the development of a brain's social systems. Conversely, denying a child easy and extensive exploration of electronic technology helps to create an electronically hampered adult in an increasingly electronic culture. Surfing on TV, video, the Internet, and anything else that's electronic is the screenagers version of how to drive a car by first successfully mastering a tricycle/wagon/bicycle.

Memory Systems

- Our short-term (or working) memory is an attentional buffer that allows us to hold a few units of information for a short period of time while we determine their importance. Since the system has space/time limitations, it must rapidly combine (or chunk) key related bits of foreground information into single units by identifying similarities/ differences/patterns that can simplify an otherwise confusing sensory field. The appeal of computerized video games may well lie in their lack of explicit instructions to the players, who suddenly find themselves in complex electronic environments that challenge them to quickly identify and act on rapidly changing elements that may or may not be important. Failure sends the player back to the beginning, and success brings a more complex, albeit, attractive challenge in the next electronic environment.

- Our short-term memory processes frame the segment of the environment that we perceive. We attend to the things that are inside the frame, and were merely aware of the context, the things that are outside of the frame. Mass media often eliminate a proper presentation of the context of an event, and so distort its meaning and importance. The result is that it presents a rare isolated event as being common, and people overreact. For example, a brutal park murder clears all the parks in the region. Children must develop a sense of context in the electronic media world they experience (and unfortunately, many adults who should assist them also equate rare with common. Even a President spoke normatively of welfare queens who lived in mansions and drive large cars).

-The efficiency of our dual long term memory system depends on our ability to string together and access long sequences of: (1) related motor actions into automatic skills (procedural memory), and (2) related objects/ events into stories (declarative memory). Thus, story-telling activities dominate our culture, through conversations/jokes/songs/novels/films/TV/ballets/sports/etc. Young people must master various storytelling forms and techniques, and electronic media can both help and hinder this process (through their range, editing techniques, and interactive potential.

Response Systems

Our brain uses two systems to analyze and respond to environmental challenges, and electronic mass media often exploit these systems:

1. relatively slow, analytic, reflective system (thalamus- hippocampus-cortex circuitry) explore the more objective factual elements of a situation, compares them with related declarative memories, and then responds. It's best suited to non-threatening situations that don't require an instant response -- life's little challenges. It often functions through storytelling forms and sequences, and so is tied heavily to our language and classification capabilities. User-friendly computer programs and non-frantic TV programming tend to use this rational system.

2. A fast conceptual, reflexive system (thalamus-amygdala- cerebellum circuitry) identifies the fearful and survival elements in a situation, and quickly activates automatic response patterns (procedural memory) if survival seems problematic.

The fast system developed through natural selection to respond to immanent predatory danger and fleeting feeding and mating opportunities. It thus focuses on any loud/ looming/ contrasting/ moving/ obnoxious/ attractive elements that might signal potential danger, food, and/or mates. The system thus enhances survival, but its rapid superficial analysis often leads us to respond fearfully, impulsively, and inappropriately to situations that didn't require an immediate response, (Regrets and apologies often follow). Stereotyping and prejudice are but two of the prices we humans pay for this powerful survival system. Worse, fear can strengthen the emotional and weaken the factual memories of an event. Consequently, we become fearful of something, but we're not sure why, so the experience has taught us little that's consciously useful.

- People often use mass media to exploit this system by stressing elements that trigger rapid irrational fear responses. Politicians demonize opponents; sales pitches demand an immediate response; zealots focus on fear of groups who differ from their definition of acceptable. The fast pacing of TV and video game programming, and their focus on bizarre/violent/sexual elements also trigger this system. If the audience perceives these elements and the resulting visceral responses as the real-world norm, the electronic media must continually escalate the violent/sexual/bizarre behavior to trigger the fast system. Rational thought development would thus suffer. We can see this escalation in mass media.

- Conversely, if a person perceives these electronic-world elements as an aberration, and not normative of the real world, such electronic experiences could often actually help to develop rational thought and appropriate response. Those who will understand the normative center of a phenomenon must also know about its outer reaches -- and mass media provide a useful metaphoric format for observing the outer reaches of something without actually experiencing it (such as how to escape from a dangerous situation one might confront )

So perhaps it's not what electronic media bring to a Developing Mind that's most important, but rather what the Developing Mind brings to the electronic media. Children who mature in a secure home/school with parents/teachers who explore all of the dimensions of humanity in a non-hurried accepting atmosphere can probably handle most electronic media without damaging their dual memory and response systems. They'll tend to delay their responses, to look below the shiny surface of things. Further, they'll probably also prefer to spend much more of their time in direct interactions with real live people. They will thus develop the sense of balance that permits them to be a part of the real and electronic worlds -- but also to stand apart from them

http://www.i-a-e.org/articles/46-feature-articles/48-the-effects-of-electronic-media-on-a-developing-brain.html

ROLE OF ELECTRONIC MEDIA IN COMMUNICATION

Communication and electronic media go hand in hand. In this technology oriented era the use of electronic communication is inevitable. The role and importance of electronic communication can't be overlooked. Electronic information interchange is necessary for the survival in current era. Information is the back bone of the economy of a Nation. Electronic media has improved communication numerous ways.

Internet has immensely helped in communicating. There are a lot of new websites coming in each day, each hour. Emails are an efficient and economical mode for communication with no time restraints and country borders. More and more people use emails to communicate and spread information. These characteristics of electronic communication have a tempting effect on the organizations to carry on their businesses. Organizations use electronic communication as their marketing tool leading to spam for some of the recipients.

The Internet and electronic communications (also called computer mediated communications, or CMC) doesn't just mean new tools for communication; it means new ways to communicate. Today our organization interacts with its various constituents differently - employees, board members, customers, partners and others - depending upon the nature of the message, the goals you are trying to achieve and the strengths (and weaknesses) of the available media - telephones, voice mail, fax machines, print, etc.
Electronic communications adds a powerful new channel that not only will change how you use this mix of options, but it will create entirely new ways to interact. For example: * Electronic communications lets you combine numerous media - text, graphics sound, video, etc. - into a single message. That can result in far more meaningful communications tailored to the nature of your particular audience. In contrast to broadcasting, narrowcasting reflects the ability to develop numerous communications for subsets of your market or constituencies. * Electronic communications is interactive. It engages audiences in active, two-way communications. That requires a new way of thinking about advertising copy and the handling of public relations. The pay-off, however, is a self-selected audience, engaged and actively participating in the communications process. * Two-way communication is nothing new. But electronic communications creates a new form of many-to-many communications that lets geographically distributed groups communicate interactively and simultaneously through text, sound and video. You can hold inexpensive video conferences or press conferences from your desk, or conference with people at several desks located across the world. One of the burgeoning phenomena of the Internet is businesses and organizations sponsoring, supporting and moderating discussion groups about issues, products, strategies - anything of interest to the organization and its constituents. Sponsorships are also solicited for popular resources, such as indexes and other Internet search tools, and these provide a further communications and marketing opportunity. * Many organizations are using electronic communications facilities, such as the World Wide Web, as internal communications tools to enhance team work. Many individuals at different locations can work on the same documents, hold meetings and integrate research findings. * Electronic communications removes the power of communications gatekeepers to both positive and negative effects. Most organizations are used to controlling the messages that go out to its constituents through managers, spokespeople and others. But with the Internet, constituents begin to talk among themselves, requiring new approaches and a new emphasis on listening and reacting, not just talking. * With the Internet you have the ability to transmit and receive large amounts of information quickly to and from individuals and workgroups around the world. This changes the way activists, for example, can galvanize communities, inform legislators and change public opinion. It changes the sources and depth of your constituents' knowledge levels. It also lets those constituents reach you with new kinds of communications they may never have attempted before.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Role_of_electronic_media_in_communication